Reflections, Reviews and News from the worlds of Opera and Classical Music

Tuesday, 21 November 2017

Staatsoper Hannover: Salome

18 November 2017

When Richard Strauss was hesitating about composing Elektra so soon after Salome, Hugo von Hofmannsthal tried to
set his mind at rest. The two plays—the former by Hofmannsthal himself, of
course, the latter by Oscar Wilde—were completely different, he assured the composer in
one of the earliest letters of their correspondence.

‘The blend of colour in
the two subjects strikes me as quite different in all essentials,’ Hofmannsthal wrote: ‘in Salome much is so to speak purple and
violet, the atmosphere is torrid; in Elektra,
on the other hand, it is a mixture of night and light, or black and bright.’

Admittedly, Hofmannsthal’s descriptions were not entirely
disinterested: he was determined that Strauss should move forward with his Elektra. However, I was reminded of his
characterization of the composer’s 1905 shocker when watching Ingo Kerkhof’s
production—distilled, abstract, cool.

Inge Medert’s costumes put the cast in regulation dishevelled smart-contemporary, our Salome in a simple linen dress. In the first scene, everyone apart from her sings from the front seats of the
Erster Rang, and characters keep popping up through other doors in the auditorium. Salome, appearing through a broad, slinky, smartly-lit metallic string curtain upstage, is the main
attraction, the subject of everyone’s gaze.

The other main feature of Anne Neuser’s set is a wall
of dull gold that descends intermittently to focus the attention, and to
provide the background for some effective shadow play (lighting by Elana
Siberski). Kerkhof offers an unusual take on the dance (choreographed by
Mathias Brühlmann), in which the dinner guests stay on to don frocks and dance
around themselves, while a blindfolded Herod is tricked into touching them up.

There’s some gore when Narraboth slashes his forearms to bloody effect, and
kudos to the prop department for an impressive severed head, delivered
wrapped in a cloth. That’s about it, though. Jochanaan (the impressively
resonant and imposing Brian Davis) has no cistern to sing from, his voice
emanating from somewhere on high. There’s no sense of time or place.

There’s little to be actively offended about in the production, but nor does it
add anything.

Or, in fact, it's worse than that, for the lack of any context precludes any sense
of that torrid atmosphere Hofmannsthal described, or much sense of who the characters are.

Strauss’s score calls out
to be amplified by something more, in terms of staging, than we had here. I found myself neither moved or shocked by
Salome’s final scene—and ideally one should, I think, be both.

Matters perhaps
weren’t helped by the fact that Ivan Repušić’s conducting, though certainly not
without its powerful eruptions, charted a sensible, level-headed course. Highly musical and distinguished by impressive clarity of texture (and on the whole very well played by the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester Hannover), it didn't offer anything extra to make up for the lack of anything on stage.

That's hardly the conductor's fault, though, and one can’t really fault the cast, either. Annemarie
Kremer’s Salome, though occasionally failing to project sufficiently in her
lower range, stayed the course admirably and acted with intensity: her scenes
with Davis’s unusually suggestible Jochanaan, alternating disgust with a kind
of desperate, intertwining intimacy, were a highlight. There was much to enjoy in Robert Künzli’s jittery
Herod and Kathuna Mikaberidze's imperious, youthful Herodias. Among the smaller roles the young bass Daniel
Eggert stood out as the First Nazerene. Simon Bode might have made more of Narraboth.

Ultimately, though, this Salome's lack of potency was down to the director. No one in the cast or in the
pit could do much to bring colour and atmosphere to his underwhelming
staging.

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About Me

I am freelance critic, writer and musicologist based in Berlin. I have held editorial posts at Gramophone and Opera, was opera critic of the Spectator and have worked as a critic for the Daily Telegraph and Financial Times. I was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015), now also available – when I checked last – in French, German and Spanish. My PhD (awarded from King's College London in early 2011) was a critical reassessment of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten'; further details of my academic work can be found under 'Publications and Papers'.
If you'd like to email me, I can be reached on hugojeshirley[at]gmail.com.

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Fatal Conclusions is designed to serve as a modest outlet for various reviews (of varying levels of formality and punctuality) and ideas regarding what's going on in the Opera and Classical Music worlds--and, if I'm feeling adventurous, beyond. Thanks for popping by. I hope you enjoy reading and please feel free to leave comments.